Answering Questions and More

The painted quilt has been hung on the porch!

Several questions were asked in last weeks comments, I did quick answers for them but today will write a bit more.

The first question was on backing and batting for my leaf pieces. I back all my hand stitched pieces with flannel, both the weekly and the dailies. I buy flannel in the home dec department in JoAnn's, it is wider than regular flannel and has a very nice drape. I get it on sale or with a coupon and buy several yards at once. I put misty fuse on the flannel before I cut it up. For the weekly leaves I cut the flannel into 6.5 inch squares and fuse it to the square after I've printed it. For the daily pieces 

I fuse the flannel to a large piece of the background fabric and then cut out the 4inch squares. I find that the flannel gives the fabric just enough body to do the hand embroidery with nice definition but no puckers. I never use a hoop to keep the fabric taunt, it's not needed with the flannel back.

The other question was what do I do with them.

The daily pieces get sewn together in rows of 19 squares. After I take a picture of the weeks squares I sew them together. When I'm done with all 365(or 366) I put on a backing and stitch in the ditch, then put a facing on.

This year the Weekly pieces are being fused to felt squares which are being sewn together.

 I finish each years project, whether weekly or daily, put on hanging sleeves and label them. Unfortunately then they get either folded or rolled and put in a big pile. There are now seven finished daily projects(it will be eight next week), you can see them all here and three finished weekly projects which can be seen here, here and here.

Sometime towards the end of the first year of doing these I had the idea that by the time I turned seventy I would have ten daily pieces and four weekly ones done and I thought it would be a great idea to be able to hang them all together. This would require me to write up a proposal and send it out to likely venues. This is not something that I am comfortable doing, so it's going to require me to step out of my comfort zone. The way off age of seventy is just a bit over a year away, so I'd better get busy!

The Weekly Leaf

This week I used some of the leftover paper from a couple of weeks ago.

Week #10

Daily Stitching updates

Gelli Prints #61-#67

Sari Ribbon #354-#360 , only six more to go!

Linked to "Off the Wall Friday"

Painting a Quilt for the porch

I've been thinking about painting a quilt to hang on my front porch, I figure if they can hang them on barns, I can hang one on my porch. On my last visit to the craft store I picked up a 24" square canvas. This week I decided that it had been sitting in the corner long enough and got to work. I will probably never make a double wedding ring quilt, but since I like circles that's what I painted. I made a twelve inch circle template and traced my pattern onto the canvas and got right to painting. My background color is red.

Then one set of circles is a deep turquoise.

Next set is gold(I forgot to take a picture) and the overlapping parts are green.

My color selection was based on the limited selection of acrylic paints that I own. The green was made by mixing the gold and turquoise, it was quite dark so I thinned it with water, which was not the right way to do it and it didn't cover well. After the paint had dried I covered the green areas with  transparent fabric paint which worked quite well. The green actually looks textured, more like a tone on tone print fabric. To finish I outlined everything with a black paint pen and then a coat of matte gel medium.

All thats left to do is to get it hung! I promise a picture when it happens.

The Weekly Leaf

This weeks leaf is just stitches. I drew a group of leaves, light traced the drawing onto my fabric and started stitching.

The tracing is so light that it doesn't show up in the picture.

Week #9

Daily Stitching updates

Gelli prints #54-#60

Sari Ribbon #347-#353

Linked to "Off the Wall Friday"

Painting, staining and repeating

I've spent a good part of the last five days staining and painting. Early in the mornings before it gets to hot I've been staining all the exposed wood on the new front porch and since it needs at least two coats I've also been repeating the process the following day. The first day I ran out of stain part way through the first coat and had to stop until my husband brought more home.  Then as the day gets hotter I move into Studio B where the railing boards are being painted before they are put in place. My ten foot long table sure is handy!

My garden which has produced an abundance of tomatoes in the past few years is looking quite dismal this year. The only things growing really well are the sunflowers that I don't plant, but have a jungle of every year and the coleus that I put in the barrel by Studio B.

I have done a bit of sewing on my new Bernina, but nothing major yet. It's taking me awhile to get used to some of it's features, like pressing a button to lower the presser foot, but I'm sure I'll adjust.

Daily project update
365 Red Circles #207 - #212

Indigo and Rust  #135 - # 140

Week #31

Now linked to "Off the Wall Fridays"

Apricots, a quilt done, parts for another and daily stitching

While many in the area are lamenting the lack of fruit due to a late frost, our apricot tree is producing a bumper crop. They are larger than what we usually get and taste wonderful.

We have eaten way more than our share and have given away five basketfuls already and there's plenty more on the tree.

I have the quilting done on the cutup mono print piece, just need to add the sleeve and label. Here's a look at the quilting.

In August I'll be going on another girls week up north with some friends so I've been getting parts ready for a quilt I'll assemble while we're at the cabin.

The photo doesn't show it but all the fabric is a woven metallic (except for the teal hand dye). I've had them in my stash for many years and I think they've finally aged enough for me to use them.

The front porch is progressing slowly, Don likes to stretch his projects out. We did buy a couple of chairs and a table and have been enjoying evenings in the shade.

Daily stitching projects, there are two photos each since I took pictures earlier in the week but never got around to doing a blog post.

365 Red Circles #191 - # 198

Indigo and rust #119 - #126

Week #28 & #29

Now linked to "Off the Wall Friday"

New construction, both on the house and artwork

New construction has been taking place this week. First - our house is getting a front porch! When we were looking for a house eight years ago, we almost didn't even look at the inside of this house because the front was quite unappealing. I'm glad we did because the inside had the space we were looking for and with the remodeling we've done over the years has become a place we love. So this summer we are taking care of the front of the house. At some point in it's past our house was a duplex, so we have two front doors. I forgot to take a before picture but in the picture below that was taken early the second morning of work you can see them both.

The door on the right is never used, but we need to keep it there because it's the only way we can get furniture or anything large in and out of the part of the house. That part of the house is Studio A where I do all my sewing. My large ironing table is in front of the door and my sewing table is in front of the window.The porch will have only one stair access and that will be for  the front door. If necessary in the future another set of stairs can be added to the right side.
This is how it looked after a couple of days work.

Still a bit of work to do, but I'm already loving it.

The second construction is with fabric, much easier to work with. I had decided to use up all the small parts and scraps leftover from the queen size commission quilt I did earlier this year. I had sewn them together with plans to make a donation quilt, knew that it would need to be wider but was done for the day and hung it on my design wall and fell in love with it. I like it just the way it is and am surprised at how it turned out especially since I had given no thought at all to design, I was just sewing together pieces.

Of course I have no idea what I'm going to do with it, but I guess it can go in the pile with the rest of my quilts.

Daily projects: 365 Red Circles #181 - #186 (over half way through the year!)

Indigo and Rust #109 - #114

Weekly #27